Professor Radzik obtained her PhD in philosophy from the University of Arizona in 1997.

Spindle Law: You are the first of those whom we’ve profiled who is not and has not practiced as a lawyer. As a legal philosopher, were you ever tempted to go to law school or become a lawyer?

Linda Radzik: Actually, I wasn’t ever tempted to go to law school. I was interested first in sociology, because of an interest in social justice, and then found philosophy. I didn’t want to be a lawyer because I couldn’t see myself in the courtroom—and I think that’s every student’s idea of what it is to be a lawyer. When I went to the University of Arizona, Joel Feinberg was just finishing his career there. It was where I began thinking of connections between morality and law.  I believe the law is just one piece of the picture that we identify as morality, along with politics and aspects of everyday life.

SL: Your work focuses on moral issues that arise in the aftermath of wrongdoing.  Can you describe the range of moral issues that you’ve studied?

LR: In my book on atonement, I wanted to cover the whole range of wrongdoing and responses to it: from making a rude comment to a friend all the way to murder, and systematic injustice in whole communities. It’s quite a broad range. In my next project, I will be focusing on everyday life, with less emphasis on law and politics.

SL: Have you looked at how attitudes towards these issues have changed over time?

LR: No, I tend to look at these questions in a normative way. So, I keep it in the first-person plural: “What should we think? What should we do?” One thing I’m interested in, and will be exploring in my new project, is a focus on what average people—as bystanders—can and should do. For instance, we have this way of looking at wrongdoing: if the act is illegal, then the state will take care of it. If it’s not illegal, then it’s none of my business. You can see what is wrong with this in the context of schoolyard bullying, where children engage in name-calling and social exclusion. The social science literature on bullying suggests that one effective way to address bullying is for bystanders and the whole school community to clearly communicate disapproval to the bully. For things that aren’t illegal but also aren’t merely personal, I’m interested in looking at the moral obligations of bystanders. For adult behavior, not just children.

SL: What are your thoughts on restorative justice, transitional justice, and other non-traditional forms of justice?

LR: I’ve studied many different theories of corrective justice. There are various moral ideals here: retributive punishment, deterrence, restitution, reconciliation, and reformation. In each of these, we get a different picture of what is important or valuable to society. Some theories focus more on punishment and don’t really address what the wrongdoer can or should do. I think the restorative justice movement, with its emphasis on reconciliation, includes a powerful moral idea. It gives wrongdoers the opportunity to be very active, in a kind of collaborative setting. In some practices, the wrongdoer and the victim negotiate how the wrong can be repaired.

However, in terms of this kind of process—restorative justice—being built into a society’s justice system, I question if this is the kind of thing that can be backed by the coercive power of the state. That is, I believe there are reasons to question whether states could require criminals or victims to engage in such processes. This may be inconsistent with what John Rawls called “liberal neutrality.” Liberal neutrality means that, in a liberal state, reasonable disagreement about what’s right and what’s good should be allowed. In such a state, people should be able to choose among different reasonable ways to address a wrong. Restorative justice is pressing a certain moral ideal. It is pushing for something close to personal forgiveness, which may not be agreeable or “good” in everyone’s view. That’s what makes me worry about the state enforcing this kind of system.

SL: How have legal academics responded to your work? And if they haven’t, do you wish they would?

LR: I haven’t yet seen my book reviewed in a law journal, for instance. But I appreciate that there is a connection between the legal community and the work that I’m doing. I am comfortable with that connection being indirect. What I sought to do was to write about the often intuitive moral conception of atonement. This is something few philosophers have directly addressed. My former colleague, Colleen Murphy, writes with perhaps a more direct connection to the legal world. She has done recent work on transitional justice and political reconciliation, with attention to international criminal law. I hope that people in the legal community and elsewhere will look to my book for ideas about what it means to right a wrong, which general ideas can certainly be tied back into the law as manifestations of such ideas.

SL: What advice do you have for law students or new lawyers, to bring some of these concepts into their practice and their thinking?

LR: My only advice—and this is what I tell my philosophy students who go on to law school—is to maintain curiosity about the fundamental values that underlie the law, including things like justice, respect and reasonable disagreement. Don’t lose sight of these in your study of the law.

Together with his late wife Jean Camper Cahn, Professor Cahn founded the Antioch School of Law, the predecessor of the University of the District of Columbia’s – David A. Clarke School of Law, the first law school in the United States to educate law students primarily through clinical training in legal services to the poor. Together, the Cahns served as co-deans of the law school from 1971 to 1980.

In the 1980s, Professor Cahn began the Time Dollars project, a service credit program, that now has more than 70 communities with registered programs in the US and abroad.  In Washington, D.C., Professor Cahn founded and directs the Time Dollar Youth Court, in which teen juries judge cases of teens arrested for the first time for non-violent offenses. The Court hears approximately 800 cases per year.

One of Professor Cahn’s articles, “The War on Poverty: A Civilian Perspective,” co-authored with Jean Camper Cahn, provided the blueprint for the National Legal Services. It is one of Yale Law Journal‘s most cited articles.

In the late 1960s, Professor Cahn published Hunger, USA, the pre-eminent exposé of hunger in America, and Our Brother’s Keeper: The Indian in White America, which, among other things, led to the enactment of the American Indian Self Determination Act.

Professor Cahn has been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Human Rights, a Senior Research Fellow at the Southeast Florida Center on Aging at Florida International University, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the London School of Economics.  He graduated from Swarthmore College, obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University, and graduated from Yale Law School in 1963.

Spindle Law: What influenced you to pursue a legal career?

Edgar Cahn: My father was a lawyer and a professor of the law.  His father was as well.  And before that, I come from a long line of rabbis and lawyers. My commitment to fighting injustice may well be rooted in the definition of justice that comes from my father. He taught me that he didn’t think human beings could grasp what justice was.  It was too general, too vague, too abstract. But he felt we were born with an innate capacity to recognize and respond to injustice, to disparities of treatment or outcome that were so unjustified as to be simply unacceptable. So my commitment to justice incorporates the definition that my father taught me:

Justice means the active process of remedying or preventing what would arouse the sense of injustice.

However, I had initially rejected the law and instead secured a doctorate in literature. I thought studying literature would help me to preserve my humanity and my ability to empathize.  I went to Yale, as a graduate student; I received a Fulbright scholarship and went to Cambridge.  I succeeded in my studies. But Jean, my wife, and I were an interracial couple.  Because of my marriage, when I graduated with my PhD,  I was told the only job available for me would be teaching basic composition at a military academy. So, I literally walked across the street and applied to the law school.

The law was really the way to fight for those values that literature celebrates. Let me share another story.  In 1964, my wife and I moved to Northwest Washington, D.C.  When we arrived at the street where we were moving to, we found the street blockaded.  The neighbors literally would not let us pass.  But then one neighbor came up to me, and told me he had received a call from the Attorney General Robert Kennedy. And that there was a memo on an important issue that he needed right away, and could I get that to him.  Then, another neighbor came up to me, and said that he had just heard from the Attorney General’s office, and there was another important assignment that needed my attention right away.  By the time the third neighbor came up to me, to tell me the same thing, the cars had begun to disperse.  We were able to get through and move into our home.  The next day when I went in to work, I said “But you have all of those memos.”  That’s when I found out that Robert Kennedy had gotten the phone numbers of my new neighbors from J. Edgar Hoover. When the neighbors got those phone calls, they realized that maybe I wasn’t someone they should be messing with.  And I didn’t even know that he knew I was moving.  That tells you the kind of man Kennedy was. Those were amazing times.

SL: How would you describe your experiences in the early 1960s as a speechwriter for then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy?

EC: Well, in anticipation of talking with you, I went back and was reviewing some of those speeches.  There are two I was just reviewing that I felt particularly good about.  The first was, I think, the first speech I ever wrote for Robert Kennedy.  It was one he gave to the Missouri Bar.  I don’t recall his name, but the leader of the Missouri Bar at the time was someone active in the American Bar Association who was opposing integration.  I wrote the speech that criticized lawyers who were mounting a massive litigation campaign to resist the implementation of Brown v. The Board of Education. Imagine, the Attorney General telling lawyers not to sue!  In effect, he was telling them not to do what they are licensed to do.  That speech really dealt with the issue of precedent.  It called out lawyers who were irresponsible, undermining the rule of law.  And now I am reading from that speech:

Every lawyer knows—though his clients may not—the distinction between the holding of a case and its rationale.  We know that although the holding contains a specific disposition of a particular fact situation between the litigants, its reasoning enunciates a rule of law that applies not merely to one case but to all similar cases…there is something less than truth in a lawyer who insists, nine years after the Brown decision and a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation, that a law of the land, a guarantee of human dignity and equality, is merely the law of a case.

The second speech I am particularly proud of was given at Law Day ’64, at the University of Chicago.  For that speech, they asked me to write what it’s been like to be Attorney General.  I said I couldn’t write that, I did not know what it was like to be the Attorney General.  So we decided, at this speech, he had to make the case for legal services for the poor.  It was about getting lawyers to accept responsibility for permitting the rise of two systems of law: one for the rich and one for the poor.  By now, the Supreme Court had decided that people had the right to legal representation in criminal cases, but of course not in civil cases. This was when the whole area of law around certain entitlement benefits, such as due process upon eviction from public housing, welfare benefits, and the like, what Charles Reich called “The New Property,” was developing.  From that speech:

We need to practice preventative law on behalf of the poor. … We need to begin to develop new kinds of legal rights in situations that are not now perceived as involving legal issues.  We live in a society that has a vast bureaucracy charged with many responsibilities.  When those responsibilities are not properly discharged, it is the poor and the helpless who are more likely to be hurt and to have no remedy whatsoever.  We need to define those responsibilities and convert them into legal obligations.  We need to create new remedies to deal with the multitude of daily injuries that persons suffer in this complex society simply because it is complex.  I am not talking about persons who injure others out of selfish or evil motives.  I am talking about the injuries which result simply from administrative convenience, injuries which may be done inadvertently by those endeavoring to help—teachers and social workers and urban planners.

I was, of course, getting at the harm that was being done for the sake of administrative convenience, and systems established for the benefit of the bureaucrats, rather than the benefit of those the bureaucracy was intended to help.

Around this same time, my wife and I had completed the article “The War on Poverty: A Civilian Perspective.”  I wanted this article to be the first publication of the Office of Economic Opportunity.  There were those who didn’t want that to happen, but once [Office of Economic Opportunity creator Sargent] Shriver read the draft of that article, he declared “It was like Columbus discovering America, an exciting thing for me to discover…something that captured my mind and imagination. That’s the genesis of Legal Services — it’s really pretty simple.” (quoted in Stossel, SARGE: The Life and times of Sargent Shriver, p. 433.)

So you can see, I have always been into causing lots of trouble.  And I hope to continue to do so.

SL: Tell me about the trouble you’ve been causing recently.

EC: There are two things, primarily, that I am working on now.  First, a couple of years back, I was asked to look into what we can do about racial disparity that we see in every system.  So, I went and looked at the law.  Starting with the Supreme Court decision in Washington v. Davis, there is no remedy for racial disparity unless you can prove discriminatory intent.  And the problem is, no one has been able to prove intent.  But considering the case law, I reasoned I know how to prove intent.  The thing is, you cannot prove intent by past motives, acts, or conduct.  No one is stupid enough to write down their discriminatory practices or intentions.  And a lot of what we see is institutional racism, patterns that persist because they are entrenched and have been for a long time.  For example, the police officer who sends the kid home for a minor misdemeanor but takes the kid down to the station and books him if the child is black.  Or a child who shows up with bruises, and he’s white, then the family gets support.  But if he’s black, the kid ends up traumatically separated from his family in foster care. So, the focus has to shift from past to future.

The idea is to put these institutions on notice. If they are faced with more effective, less injurious, and less expensive alternatives to what they are currently doing, and continue to perpetuate business as usual, that perpetuation is intentional. We had to put the institutions on formal notice.  So, we held public hearings.  We did this in Pennsylvania within the last two years.  Our forum was in front of the legislature.  So we had the opportunity to present these alternatives to those who could really make change. Our idea was, don’t go to a judge after the fact, go to the legislature and conduct a Public Notice Hearing.  And the Republican senator who had initiated many of the get-tough-on-crime laws saw the innovations that had been developed in Philadelphia and called upon the state commission to utilize the police training statewide. The judges have now adopted new rules which require them to articulate why they are not utilizing less restrictive alternatives before ordering a juvenile into confinement.  The governor’s office made over $800,000 available to establish juvenile diversion centers. It seems creating a public notice forum can help generate change that saves both lives and money. This is the work of the Racial Justice Initiative.

All of this was based on the radical idea that there is only one group of people who are not legally obliged to make use of knowledge about what works. They are called officials.  But, once they are on notice of the disparity created by present practice and the availability of alternatives that are effective, reduce disparity and are less expensive, then going back to previous practice gives rise to a civil rights claim under Section 1983.

The other current project I wanted to mention was a new organization called the Homecomers Academy.  This is an organization for people returning from prison; the challenge was to find a way to address recidivism.  It is a Phelp-Stokes program.  A third of the folks who were involved in the planning had served between one and thirty years in prison.  And their input was the most important.  For instance, they do not want to be called ex-cons.  They wanted to be called homecomers, because they are people coming home to their community from prison.  They also suggested that they be able to present themselves to the community as students on a journey of learning and service for their communities. So they have created the National Homecomers Academy. One thing they are doing is providing safe passage for children walking to school through gang territory.  And while they’re doing that, they get time credit for it.  Also, there is a legal aid attorney in Oregon who, starting in 2012, is implementing a Time Bank retainer for her clients.  This creates a kind of pay-it-forward obligation in those who are receiving legal aid.

So, this is what I am doing in my non-retirement. [Laughs.]

SL:  Can you tell us more about the Time Bank programs with which you’ve been involved?

EC: The basic idea is that people earn time credits by giving of their time. We all have something to give of our skills and talents: doctors, lawyers, teachers, gardeners, computer programmers, mechanics. Giving time can be used to earn credits or pay back debts or discharge obligations. Each person’s time is equal: a credit is a credit. I invite people to learn more online at http://timebanks.org/, but let me give you a few examples. Teenagers charged with various misdemeanors pay back by staffing a youth court jury that has had a documented impact on reducing second arrests by over 50%.  A community group, in return for legal help getting rid of crack houses, ran an evening escort program for seniors and a campaign to get better street lighting.  Seniors in an HMO provided shopping, companionship, rides, and informal support that reduced hospital stays, deferred or avoided nursing home care.  Patients receiving health care have paid back by learning how to function as medical translators for Latino patients; once certified, they got jobs as translators by a sponsoring hospital.

SL: Those sound like fantastic programs.  Can you describe a little bit your experiences teaching law in and outside of law schools?

EC: Every place I have taught law, I have found a desire that is universal. People go into law to contribute; they want to make a difference in people’s lives and in the world. Too often, the intensity of law school and the craft they have to master numbs that or drives it out. Survival can trump everything. But the desire is always there—ready to be awakened.

SL:  Finally, what general advice do you have for law students and new lawyers?

EC: Something that helps me is to remember that nothing I do is enough.  It is what I set in motion that matters.  We need to get over our egos.  Remember that what we do is ultimately for others.

We must ask ourselves how we change the delivery system.  Our current system is one in which so few can afford legal services.  I don’t even know many lawyers who can afford lawyers.  We need to be active in helping people know their rights, effectuate their rights, exercise their rights, without reducing or forgoing the leverage that the law provides, particularly for those who are most marginal.  We need to create vehicles where people can learn and effectuate their own rights without the current prohibitive costs.

Law students need to be reminded that law is a calling.  It carries a public responsibility to advance justice.  It is not just a way to make a living, or to get status. In 1980, I had a heart attack.  I spent a long time in intensive case.  In the thirty years since, I have taken one vacation and a honeymoon.  I work seven days per week, 14-16 hours per day, and my heart is now 80% healed.  I am driven by only two questions: Why are we here? and What kind of a world do we want to leave behind?  We get so involved in the day-to-day, that we lose track of what’s important.

SL: Do you have any advice for how to break down big picture problems into solutions that can be implemented one day at a time?

EC: As lawyers, we are trained to ask, “How can I help you?”  And when we get the answer, we equate the client’s problem with the whole client.  But that problem is only 5% of the client.  We need to understand that the other 95% is important.  We need to enlist that 95% working for the world that we want to create for our children and their children.  We must start with the revelation of what an awesome being each client is.  We need to approach problems in a holistic way and we must enlist the clients, and their networks, as partners—as co-producers of justice.  If we don’t, we are perpetuating scarcity, privilege, and divisions that are counter to what we want to do.  We must have an awareness of the significance of what we do and the opportunity each transaction gives us to mobilize our clients, our community and as well as those of us in the legal service universe to advance justice in the way I was taught: to reduce or prevent that which would arouse our sense of injustice.

There is a Buddhist saying that I try to live by: “Thou shalt not traffic in human misery.”  And I ask myself, am I violating that by earning a living?  I know that I am not if I use my knowledge as a catalyst to let that person—my client, my student—fulfill their potential.  If my work can be a liberating and transformative force in their lives, then it is not work.  It is being alive.  It is a joy, and it is living with a purpose.

Finally, don’t ever stop being passionate about what you do.  We are so very privileged to be allowed to devote any portion of our lives to working for what we believe in.  That is truly a gift.

Mr. De Schutter’s most recent book is International Human Rights Law (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010).  He received his Ph.D from the University of Louvain and LL.M from Harvard Law School.

Spindle Law: When and why did you decide to pursue a career in international human rights?

Olivier De Schutter: I have always seen the study of law as a tool to promote social justice. My interest in human rights stems from my conviction that life is interesting, provided we change the world we inhabit, rather than leaving it as it is. In addition, I spent most of my youth in developing countries, including India and Rwanda, and I have been deeply moved by the extreme poverty and inequality I witnessed there. There are images you can’t erase from your mind when you see them as a boy or a teenager.

SL: Who are your professional mentors in your field?

ODS: Philip Alston, now at New York University, is a towering figure, and a reference for all who work on economic and social rights. He combined his scholarship with an involvement in the UN human rights system, since the early stages of his professional career.  At Harvard University, I was also influenced by the Critical Legal Studies movement. Roberto Unger, Duncan Kennedy, David Kennedy, all contributed to shape my views about law as a tool that could be bent for achieving a just world. The understanding of law I was introduced to then was empowering. Before entering Harvard, I felt that as a lawyer I would be a servant of the law, and I was torn between my professional ethos—what Gerry Frug might call the temptation of bureaucracy—and my commitment to justice. That tension was replaced by a much more fruitful dialectic between the body of rules we have at our disposal, and the specific situations we apply them to. In the mode of pragmatism, which is the greatest contribution America made to philosophy, legal rules in my view should be seen as provisional, and as having to be permanently tested and revised on the basis of their results. This is why I now work with scholars that come from pragmatism and focus on social institutions that promote collective learning: Charles Sabel, at Columbia Law School, is the most innovative thinker in this direction.

SL: As United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, you are charged with a very broad mandate to promote the rights of adequate food and freedom from hunger on an international scale. How would you explain the day-to-day work of your office to a person unfamiliar with these issues?

ODS: I present regular reports to governments on different themes that relate to the realization of the right to food at the national, regional and international level. The reports are presented and discussed in two fora: the UN General Assembly in New York, and the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Governments then deliberate on the recommendations contained in the reports, and they identify which actions they recommend.

I also do three country missions each year. These missions, of about two weeks each in duration, allow me to cover the range of obstacles to the realization of the right to food in the country concerned, and to encourage a dialogue on those issues between the government and civil society organizations. Beyond that, I convene expert meetings and consultations with stakeholders, I deliver conferences, I assist governments at their request to identify solutions to combat hunger. I contribute to shape the international discussion on how to contribute to food security, and my specific contribution is to insist on accountability, participation, and non-discrimination, as key principles that define an approach grounded in the human right to adequate food.

SL: The United States has not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (one of the treaties on which the right to food is based).  Why?  And, do you have any concrete recommendations for Americans wishing to alleviate right to food problems within the United States?

ODS: The idea behind the right to food is simple: we have failed to end hunger using the traditional recipe that saw hunger as a technical problem, requiring only that we produce more. We’ve failed because we’ve underestimated the need to empower people and hold governments accountable. This realization has developed over decades, including through work by Amartya Sen in the 1980s. In 1996, we had a pivotal moment at the United Nations World Food Summit in Rome: for the first time the idea of the right to food was identified as central to achieving success against hunger and malnutrition, and governments requested that human rights bodies develop the normative concept of the right to food. Until then, the concept was mostly just a slogan, seen as abstract and vague—sympathetic, but not useful. Since then, the idea became operational. It is increasingly seen as essential to fighting hunger: unless you increase political pressure on governments, unless you ensure those in need participate in identifying the solutions to the obstacles they face and play an active role in monitoring progress, nothing will change. This is a core idea of the right to food.

But you are correct that the United States remains reluctant to accept obligations based on the right to food, although it is a right that is found in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Why is this? Probably because of the American constitutional tradition that sees human rights as “negative” rights—rights against government—not “positive” rights that can be used to oblige government to take action to secure people’s livelihoods. Indeed, so embedded is this in the American constitutional culture that the concept that social and economic rights are real rights is generally not accepted. While human rights to health, education, social security or food are guaranteed to a certain extent through legislation, they are still seen as suspect. The protective role of government is denounced as paternalistic and even, following Freidrich Hayek, as paving the way for totalitarianism: such rights could empower courts against the Executive in ways perceived as undemocratic.

Of course, I disagree. Real freedom can only be achieved when individuals are shielded against the most serious exclusions caused by the market. Rights have been invented precisely because majorities can act abusively, failing to respect the needs of minorities and the underprivileged. And the fact that the United States has ratified the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which it joined in 1992, but has not ratified the equivalent covenant for economic and social rights that was adopted internationally that same year, is to me an anomaly. The concept of economic and social rights is not un-American. In his famous State of the Union address of 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt forcefully articulated the idea of a “Second Bill of Rights,” covering basic social rights as an indispensable complement to the civil liberties listed in the Bill of Rights.

SL: How did your legal education prepare you to serve in your current role at the UN?

ODS: Any problem as complex as hunger requires that we mobilize not just legal tools, but also, in this case, development economics, agronomics, or nutrition and public health. Legal education teaches you how to frame an argument. It teaches analytical precision; and the diplomatic jargon is more accessible to lawyers than to others. But the rest must be self-taught.

SL: What would you identify as the greatest advancement in human rights law during your career? Has this legal advancement been realized?

ODS: My career in human rights began in the early 1990s and progress has been achieved on many fronts since then. In fact, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, human rights were allowed to expand globally at an unprecedented speed, testing in many respects the capacity of the regional and international human rights systems to cope with this expansion. Advances made in the 1990s culminated with the trial of Augusto Pinochet, which illustrated the power of universal jurisdiction over international crimes, and with the establishment of the International Criminal Court, on which agreement was reached in 1998 and which came into force in 2002. Over the past decade, a significant development has been the strengthening of human rights imposed on companies, or in the areas of international trade or investment—but it remains an unfinished battle.

SL: You teach at law schools in Europe and in the United States.  How are these experiences similar? And different?

ODS: There is an important gap that can be easily explained by the differences between student profiles: to attend law school in Europe, you don’t need a college degree, and law students are therefore younger, less well-trained in social sciences, and they have fewer interesting questions because, in the vast majority of cases, they don’t have professional experience yet. The spirit of inquiry that is entertained in US law schools in the classroom is difficult to replicate in Europe.

SL: What advice do you have for law students or new lawyers seeking a career promoting human rights?

ODS: The field is highly competitive: there is nothing more satisfying in life than to espouse a profession that is at once intellectually demanding and socially useful. My advice is therefore to be persistent and yet flexible. Persistence means that you should not be discouraged if your first attempts to enter the field fail, or are disappointments. It takes time to find the dream job in the area, and you stumble repeatedly on the way. Flexibility means that you must accept at first to work in difficult conditions, with a meager salary or even no salary at all. But that’s a way to learn, and to gain the professional experience in the field that, later, employers—whether international organizations or non-governmental organizations—will highly prize, and which allow you to distinguish yourself from other candidates.

Mr. Neukom has been active for many years in bar association and community activities. He served as president of the American Bar Association in 2007-2008. In 2006, Mr. Neukom founded the World Justice Project, a multinational, multidisciplinary initiative to strengthen the rule of law worldwide. Through a multi-pronged approach, the Project seeks to create an international network of stakeholders who undertake programs to create communities of opportunity and equity around the world. In 1995, Mr. Neukom and four of his children founded the Neukom Family Foundation, which supports not-for-profit organizations principally in the fields of health and human services, education, justice and the environment. In addition, Mr. Neukom has been actively involved in community work serving Dartmouth College, the University of Puget Sound, Stanford Law School and the YMCA of Greater Seattle, among others.

A graduate of San Mateo High School, Dartmouth College and Stanford Law School, Mr. Neukom was raised in San Mateo, California.

Spindle Law: It’s just over a year since the Giants won the World Series. How would you compare that championship with winning a big case

Bill Neukom: There are several similarities, in the sense that winning a big case involves a team effort. Everyone from clerks and assistants to paralegals and witnesses have to perform well and work together. Both require a strong sense of teamwork and giving all the players – both on and off the field – the credit they deserve.

Of course, there are differences, particularly in scale. Unless the case you’re working on has tremendous social significance, something like Brown v. Board of Education, cases often don’t affect a lot of people. The Giants’ season last year and ultimately winning the Series had a considerable positive impact on our community, especially because we’ve never had that here in San Francisco. There was a tremendous outpouring of goodwill, all over Northern California.

SL: What corollaries do you see between sports and the legal profession?

BN: Professional athletes take their craft seriously. Professional means something more than getting paid to play. We talk about “The Giants’ Way,” which means we’re ambassadors to the community. We know it matters how we behave ourselves on and off the field. Here’s an example: last year when we won the first round of the playoffs in Atlanta, that was the Braves’ manager, Bobby Cox’s, last game. We were celebrating on the pitcher’s mound but when Bobby Cox came out of the dugout, all of our players stopped to salute him and the crowd gave him a standing ovation. Being a professional means playing good, clean baseball, not showboating or showing off. If there’s a game in which you are outplayed, it’s a tip of the hat to the other team and time to move on to prepare for the next game.

In the legal profession, we have a code of professional responsibility. Lawyers have the privilege of representing strangers. And the only reason someone feels comfortable putting his or her most important affairs in the hands of a stranger is that we have this code of conduct. We’re bound by the code to be ethical, to support the community, and to perform well for our clients.

Further, the baseball season is like a marathon. There’s lengthy preparation and you play almost every day during the season. Lawyers, like our players, must have the strength and resilience to show up every day, to find ways to seize opportunities, to see the big picture and allocate time and effort accordingly.

SL: People talk about “five-tool baseball players” like the Giants’ Willie Mays. What traits does the ideal lawyer have?

BN: It starts with having a keen intellect. Law is a demanding craft. There are many nuances and subtleties and details, but it’s set in a policy framework. A lawyer must have an agile mind and be curious. Law is continually evolving and a lawyer must be willing to evolve with it. The resilience I mentioned is quite important: the ability to show up every day and do one’s best.

A commitment to service is essential. We are a service profession. Every time we look at a legal problem, our first thought should be, “What’s in the client’s best interest?” Not, “What’s in my firm’s best interest – financially or otherwise, or what’s in my own best interest?”

Lawyers should be effective in the community. They should give both through pro bono, which is providing legal services without fee, as well as public service, which is lending one’s professional judgment, skills, and intellect in non-legal service settings. Service to the profession is important as well, through work with bar associations.

As the dean of my law school once said, lawyers also must be able to see matters through an intellectual microscope as well as an intellectual telescope. That is, to give learned advice to a client that takes into account the broad landscape, including legal policy, economics, other disciplines, yet understand the minute details that matter most in this particular case to this particular client.

Lawyers must represent clients zealously. Lawyers earn their salt when they are able to tell the client what he or she needs to hear, not just what the client wants to hear. Being skilled in delivering bad news as well as good news is important.

Lawyers thrive on teamwork. They should make work fun, when possible, and the best way I know how to do that is by giving every player involved the credit that is due to him or her for a job well done. Lawyers need to maintain a personality that enables them to get along with all types of people, especially those with whom they may be adversarial.

SL: You were quite recently President of the American Bar Association. What were the highlights of your tenure?

BN: It was a high honor to lead the largest voluntary professional organization in the world. The ABA has nearly 400,000 members and, because membership is voluntary, it must continually prove its worth to those members. The ABA has responsibility for promulgating our rules of professional responsibility. Of course, each state adopts its own version of the rules but it starts with the ABA Model Rules, for both lawyer conduct and judicial conduct.

The ABA has done a great job of screening nominees for the federal judiciary. It also provides excellent leadership in the areas of pro bono and public service, especially criminal defense and access to justice for those in poverty. The ABA helps ensure that these core responsibilities are discharged effectively.

SL: As a director of The World Justice Project, what aspect of the organization makes you most proud?

BN: The World Justice Project is premised on the notion that if you want to live and work in communities of opportunity and equity, you must lay a foundation of the rule of law. The government needs the rule of law in order to effectively provide for its people, and people need this to be secure about how they order their lives. We work to get people from all walks of work and life to buy in, come to a roundtable, and incubate projects to strengthen the rule of law and thereby make the world a better place.

Have a look at The World Justice Project’s website to learn more.

SL: Who were your professional mentors and how did they influence your career?

BN: I’ve had the good fortune to learn from many people throughout my career. It started with my folks: my father was with McKinsey and Company and was a professional role model for me. My mother was quite active in our community. Certainly Bill Gates, Sr., my colleague in practice at Preston Gates & Ellis, has been an exemplary mentor to me, as well as many other lawyers.

SL: What has been the most important development in the legal profession during your career?

BN: The increase in women entering law school and joining the profession. The legal academy is better for it, and the profession is better for it. Unfortunately, we haven’t solved some of the problems a woman faces when rising through the ranks. There are women out there in the “super mom” role who do it all, but that’s not a fair standard. We need tracks that support women in being the best lawyers while allowing them time and flexibility to do what they need to do in and around the home. We should better accommodate women at all levels of the profession.

SL: Finally, what advice would you give to young lawyers and law students?

BN: My best advice is to be over-prepared. The law is a very demanding profession. To do well, it will require very considerable application of time, energy, and skill. There is no nonchalanting your way through the law. The best thing you can do to ensure that you’ll do well is to be over-prepared. Appreciate the rigors and demands of the job and devote yourself to it. In doing so, realize you are not alone. Appreciate the fellowship of this profession. Even solo practitioners are part of this fellowship with the common goal of the best possible service to our clients.

Finally, I encourage firms and lawyers to put a premium on mentorship. It’s tough, because this often means that some of the best attorneys give up some time to it. But we all benefit from mentorship: it makes better new lawyers and gives good attorneys the chance to reinforce their best attributes through teaching. I know that the more law firms are run as businesses and less as vehicles of a learned profession, the more difficult setting aside the time for successful mentor programs can be. But the value is there. Mentors make us better lawyers and better people.

Biskupic has covered the Supreme Court for USA Today since June 2000. Before that, she was the Supreme Court reporter for The Washington Post (1992-2000) and legal affairs writer for Congressional Quarterly (1989-1992).  Biskupic is the author of several reference books, including Congressional Quarterly’s two-volume encyclopedia on the Supreme Court (1997, with co-author Elder Witt). A graduate of Georgetown University Law School, Biskupic is a regular panelist on PBS’s “Washington Week with Gwen Ifill” and NPR’s “Diane Rehm Show.”

Spindle Law: Which came first for you: the law or journalism?

Joan Biskupic: I came first to journalism. I grew up on Chicago’s South Side and fairly early caught the bug to write. My first newspaper story was published while I was still in high school, in the Chicago Daily News, which was an afternoon paper and is now long-gone. I went to Marquette University for college and worked for the Milwaukee Journal, where I started as a “copy” kid. At the Journal and other papers, I then mainly covered government and politics, but I found myself regularly gravitating toward stories about courts and the law. I moved to Washington in late 1987 to be bureau chief for the Tulsa Tribune (also an afternoon paper that eventually closed). In 1989, I fully shifted into law-related reporting when I landed the legal affairs beat at Congressional Quarterly weekly report. I expanded the beat to include the Supreme Court and, while working fulltime, started going to Georgetown Law School at night. This was back before the 24/7 news cycle, and I was able to juggle CQ work and school. While I was still finishing up the law degree, I was hired by the Washington Post, in 1992, to cover the Supreme Court fulltime. Every now and then I think about practicing law, but the truth is—even with all the trouble in the news industry—this is an exciting business and I keep sticking with it.

SL: You have been covering the Supreme Court since the late 1980s. How has the experience changed for you over time?

JB: The pace is so different. When I first began seriously covering the Court, it was for Congressional Quarterly and our deadlines were once a week. For most of my time at the Washington Post (1992-2000), I was filing one story a day. Now, on any given day, I usually file a quick story about a case first for our website and then write a longer piece for the next day’s newspaper. I try to send items for various USA Today blogs and will sometimes tweet about news at the Court. At the same time, in recent years as I’ve been writing the books, I keep in mind how material I collect might work into a larger project. I also occasionally write short essays for my book blog. So, in addition to writing faster, I’m feeding multiple platforms, from Twitter to hard-cover books.

SL: Watching oral argument at the Supreme Court, what have you seen as the attributes of the most and least effective advocates?

JB: I always say the Supreme Court is the best field trip in town. The grand white-marble and red-velvet courtroom has hardly changed since the 1930s. And once the marshal opens the session, there are no real distractions. Everyone in the room is there for just one reason: the arguments. No computers, iPhones, cell phones, or any other electronic devices are permitted. Police officers ensure silence among spectators. And the advocacy has really improved over the years. As stuffy as the place can be, the arguments can get really exciting.

The most effective advocates listen as carefully as they speak. They figure out what a justice wants to know rather than stick to their own talking points. They are responsive. They know the record. They are respectful. I know that last one sounds obvious, but I have seen even veteran advocates cut off a justice, speak over a question, or even say something that is plainly misleading. Chief Justice Roberts has called a couple of lawyers on this recently. He will not abide any shading of the truth or a mischaracterization of an opponent’s argument.

The best advocates make it look easy, like Fred Astaire dancing. But, of course, it’s not easy and the best advocates rehearse the fine details of their case yet are ready to speak in broad principles. They are also ready for the hypotheticals—some of them pretty weird—that come from the current bench.

SL: You described the upcoming 2011-12 Supreme Court term as “potentially epic.”  Why?

JB: We already have a very good run of cases, with disputes over GPS, strip searches, Cher’s “fleeting expletives,” and the “Stolen Valor” law, just to name a few. But the term will take on great significance when the justices take up the health-care litigation. That case testing the constitutionality of President Obama’s signature domestic initiative goes directly to the division of powers between Congress and the states and involves one of the most pressing policy issues of the day: how to pay for health care. The case is also coming smack in the middle of an election year and, as you know, all major GOP presidential candidates oppose the health care law. It is likely to remain center-stage in the 2012 elections. We might also get the Arizona immigration dispute and the Texas affirmative action cases this term. But health-care alone could make this term historic.

SL: Following up on that, we’ve recently learned the Court will hear 5.5 hours of oral argument on the health care reform case. Can you comment on the significance of this? In context, what other oral arguments—if any—have been this long?

JB: That whopping five and one half hours reinforces the significance of the case, to the justices and for the country. That’s a modern record. I believe the last time the Court scheduled more than that amount of time for a consolidated dispute was in the 1960s. Although the justices have not set the specific dates yet, it’s likely that the 5 1/2 hours will be spread over two days in March. They need that amount of time to look at all the legal questions, which include whether Congress—in passing the individual-insurance mandate—exceeded its power to regulate commerce, whether it wrongly expanded Medicaid, the federal-state program for the poor; whether, if any single provision of the law is invalid, the whole Affordable Care Act is doomed; and finally, but actually as a threshold issue, whether any challenge to the individual mandate must wait until after 2014 when a person who refuses to buy coverage has to pay the tax penalty.

SL: In what ways has the Supreme Court changed since the fourth female Justice, Justice Elena Kagan, was confirmed?

JB: When you walk into the courtroom now, it looks different. The bench has lost its overwhelming white-male look. There are now three women sitting. (The first woman justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, retired in January 2006.) Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told me she particularly likes that the three women are spread out along the nine seats, based on their seniority: “It says women are here to stay.” In terms of other diversity, there’s one Hispanic justice, Sonia Sotomayor, and one African-American, Clarence Thomas.

It remains an open question how the three women would collectively affect the law. Ideologically, they are all on the left, which is different from the years when Justice Ginsburg, appointed by President Bill Clinton, and Justice O’Connor, named by President Ronald Reagan, sat together (1993-2006).

SL: You’ve written biographies of former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Antonin Scalia.  How did your approach to these books differ?  Who are you writing about next?

JB: I became interested in Justice O’Connor as the politician on the Court. During her quarter-century tenure she was the only justice on the bench who had held elected office before becoming a judge. I used to say she came to Washington knowing how to count votes and that made her effective in the justices’ private conference. I liked her Western, pioneering story, too. In researching her, I spent a lot of time in the Ronald Reagan archive in Simi Valley, California. Separate files there on Scalia, appointed by Reagan in 1986, prompted me to seriously think about Scalia as a subject. It was Scalia, not O’Connor, who fully embodied the conservative Reagan ideal for the federal courts. I became interested in showing how Scalia became Scalia (in terms of his life history) and how the Reagan administration turned to Scalia to fulfill its agenda for the nation’s highest court.

My current book related to Justice Sotomayor is not a biography like the first two works. Rather, I use the arc of her life, beginning in 1954, as part of an exploration of the progress of Latinos in the law and a political history of judicial nominations.

SL: Which former justice(s) would you have wished to have heard or met? Why?

JB: That’s a hard question, because there are so many I wished I could have met. There’s the great Chief Justice John Marshall. And then there’s the entire FDR Court, which has been on my mind because of several books out lately and because of the big health-care challenge coming up. But since you also asked who I wish I could “have heard,” I’ll mention that I wish I could have been around to hear Ruth Bader Ginsburg argue her six cases in the 1970s. That was when she made a name for herself as a women’s rights advocate. (She won five of the six cases.) She said she relished being able to stand at the lectern and present her case because it was the one time the nine were essentially captive to her arguments. But I’ve been watching her on the bench, in the black robe, for so long that I cannot quite envision her on the other side of it.

As SIGTARP, Mr. Barofsky audited and investigated the purchase, management, and sale of assets under the $700 billion TARP, the government bailout of banks and other companies during the recent financial crisis. When Mr. Barofsky left the Office of SIGTARP in spring of 2011, it had convicted 18 people, saved $555 million in taxpayer funds from being lost to fraud, and was working on 153 pending civil and criminal investigations, including 74 involving executives and senior officers at financial institutions who received or applied for TARP money.

Prior to serving as SIGTARP, Mr. Barofsky was a federal prosecutor for more than eight years in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. In that office, Mr. Barofsky rose to Senior Trial Counsel. He headed the Mortgage Fraud Group, which investigated and prosecuted all aspects of mortgage fraud. Mr. Barofsky was also a member of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Unit. Mr. Barofsky received the Attorney General’s John Marshall Award for his work on a case against Refco, Inc., involving a $2.5 billion accounting fraud scheme. Mr. Barofsky also led the investigation that resulted in the indictment of the top 50 leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on narcotics charges, a case described by the then Attorney General as the largest narcotics indictment in U.S. history.

Spindle Law: First, I have some questions about you and your background. Who or what influenced you to become a lawyer?

Neil Barofsky: Being a lawyer is always something I’ve wanted to do. Ever since I was a kid, really as young as I can remember, I wanted to be a prosecutor. Which is perhaps strange because no one in my family is a lawyer. No one had even gone to graduate school. When I was 12 or 13, I got a fortune cookie with a message about how I’d be a great lawyer. I signed and dated it, and my mom hung onto it. I just knew I wanted to be a prosecutor.

SL: What has been your proudest moment as a lawyer?

NB: I would say it was the indictment of the top 50 leaders of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia  — known as FARC — on narcotics charges. Before then, that group had really been trying to position itself as a legitimate political insurgency. The media started reporting it as a legitimate political movement even though it was completely funded itself through cocaine trafficking.   With the help of a number of some unbelievably committed DEA agents and others, we used the criminal justice system to show the world who they really were, which was a thuggish – I would even say evil – narco-terrorist organization controlling half of the world’s cocaine production. Since the indictment, there’s been significant decline in FARC’s size and scope. We were able to use the legal system to completely delegitimize them internationally.

SL: Was your work after that indictment less interesting?

NB: Not really, it was just different. I was involved in the $2.5 billion accounting fraud case that led to the conviction of the Refco, Inc., president and guilty plea of their former CEO. I’m also proud that our work helped lead to the charge, trial, and conviction of Joe Collins, who was Refco’s outside counsel. That case showed that we could hold accountable those who were perpetrating this massive fraud, including the lawyers.

SL: Now a few questions relating to your time as Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). First, you have been pretty critical of TARP since you left this spring. Are there identifiable successes?

NB: Absolutely. Despite my criticism, there’s no question that TARP, in connection with some really rather remarkable action on the part of the Federal Reserve and the FDIC, and others, was instrumental in preventing the collapse of our largest financial institutions. TARP was the only mechanism through which the Government could fill the equity holes that were caused by the massive losses suffered by the banks, and it did.

In the short term, the continued statements, from then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and subsequently from current Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, that none of the banks would be allowed to fail, were really helpful. Those statements eventually convinced the market that these institutions really wouldn’t fail. This would not have been possible without TARP. And if we’d had a collapse, unemployment would have been far worse, so TARP did help Main Street in that respect. Unfortunately, the Government failed to deal with moral hazard caused by those very same actions, so while there was a short-term gain of avoiding a complete financial collapse, the long-term costs of those decisions have yet to be determined.

SL: You have talked about the long-term damage to government credibility stemming from the bailouts and subsequent government action – or inaction. Is there any way to undo this damage to people’s trust in the government? What could have been done to prevent this?

NB: It would be very difficult, actually impossible, to totally undo the credibility damage that’s been done.  Secretary Geithner’s administration of TARP has caused a significant blow to the government’s credibility.  You can see it today, as Treasury complains that they cannot do anything bold to deal with the housing crisis because “Congress won’t let us,” and so, instead, just tinker around the edges.  This ignores the wide latitude that they had under TARP, with hundreds of billions of dollars that Treasury chose not to spend to support housing initiatives. There were plenty of opportunities to use what was in place. To complain now that we can’t do anything? It’s disingenuous and remarkably damaging.

Another part of it is that in Washington, it seems that no one will ever admit their mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, yet there has been a real refusal to acknowledge problems with TARP. They’d rather be stuck with a failing program than be accountable for its failings and try to move forward. When I talk with my students at NYU, they ask why no one can acknowledge that things weren’t done perfectly. This kind of thing feeds a deep, deep cynicism, and not just among the students.

SL: You have pointed out the tension and disparity between government programs that help Wall Street and those that help – or should help – Main Street. Do you think the Occupy Wall Street protests are in any way a reaction to TARP and its problems?

NB: A repeating theme has been to avoid or ignore the Main Street focused goals of TARP. With the recent amendment of an existing refinance program, administration officials even said it wasn’t going to announce its goals.  So instead, they want to be able to avoid accountability by being able to say “Whatever this program is, we’ll define that as success.” And that just reeks of government opportunism. TARP was passed with promises that it would be used to help homeowners and the middle class in the midst of the financial crisis. These so-called Main Street goals of TARP were what garnered much of the support needed to enact it – and they’ve been abandoned.

I think it’s interesting that both the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement were born of the bank bailouts. Both are responding to a situation in which Wall Street got saved while the middle class got screwed. I believe that if Treasury had approached the middle class and Main Street protection goals of TARP with the same ferocity that it did the aspects that helped Wall Street, we’d be in a much different, and better, position now.

I’m encouraged that these issues are being raised – not just from the progressives and the Occupy Wall Street context, but on the right as well. John Huntsman and Jeb Bush have both written editorials that seem to call for breaking up the largest banks.  They recognize that our current system is not capitalism, it is subsidizing Wall Street, an industry that doesn’t need it. It’s bad for our country. This, at least, is something on which everyone should agree.

SL: You recently criticized the expansion of the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). You said “the government is just not that good” at mortgage refinancing programs. Who would be better positioned to help?

NB: The government can and should have a role in addressing the foreclosure crisis. I definitely don’t think we should be throwing the struggling borrowers to the wolves. But, I find it troubling that the administration just ignores a huge part of TARP’s mandate — the Main Street goals I was referring to — which would really help in the foreclosure crisis. They’ve really done an incompetent, bumbling job of it. I always have some small hope that a light bulb will go off and there will be action and accountability, but it’s a small hope.

SL: What about the Dodd-Frank Act? Is it working? Will it help?

NB: Dodd-Frank does some good. It was supposed to end the era of “too big to fail.” We saw what happened with the bailouts and said, “Never again!” And you can see by the market’s reaction that no one’s convinced that bailouts won’t happen again. In fact, the largest institutions are reaping the benefits of the assumption that they will be bailed out again. Credit rating agencies are still giving them higher ratings based on the idea that, if things go south, the government will again be there to step in and bail them out again. They are able to borrow money more cheaply than their smaller counterparts.  It just hasn’t convinced anyone.

You can see what’s happening in Europe, which is the same problem. I think Dodd-Frank missed some opportunities to fundamentally restructure the system so these banks wouldn’t have come back bigger and stronger. It could have separated trading and investing, too. However, what it has done is given lots of discretion to the regulators. If they had the strength of will, they could rein in “too big to fail.” Unfortunately, that concentration of power and discretion is in the Secretary of the Treasury, whose job it is to carry out the political will of the Administration, rather than focus on doing what it takes to fix the system.  So it is a very long shot.

SL: Finally, what advice would you give to law students and new lawyers?

NB: I try to encourage students to pursue public service. I graduated in 1995 and spent three years in private practice. The rest has been in public service until now. I realize that the economic pressures of student loans make private practice very attractive. I just finished paying off my student loans last year. But there is no better way to practice law and feel like you’re really making a difference than in public service.

I know a lot of lawyers, and too few of my law school classmates who are in private practice are extraordinarily happy in their work. There is a lot more to life and to the practice of law than making money. My advice is if you feel inside that you can make a difference, if you seek satisfaction beyond a paycheck, do it if you can. Even if you’re in private practice, there are ways to make a difference. Don’t hold yourself back.

Arthur is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School.  After serving as a law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Gabrielle M. McDonald, he worked as an associate at the Philadelphia law firm of Kohn, Savett, Marion & Graf (now Kohn, Swift & Graf, P.C.), handling First Amendment, civil rights, and complex civil litigation. While at that firm, he brought and tried the case that forced the admission of women to Philadelphia’s previously all-male Central High School.

Arthur joined Public Justice (then Trial Lawyers for Public Justice) in 1984 as its then-sole staff attorney and became its Executive Director in 1987. In 1991, he was honored by the American Bar Association as one of twenty young lawyers making a difference in the world. In 1994, because of his success litigating Title IX cases, he was named by College Sports Magazine as one of the fifty most influential people in college sports.

Spindle Law: What attracted you to public interest law?

Arthur Bryant: I wanted to be a lawyer to try to make the world a better place and to fight for people and things I believed in.  Public interest law was the obvious place to do that.  I thought I could make a bigger difference practicing public interest law than doing anything else.

SL: Who were your professional mentors and how did they influence your career?

AB: My primary mentor was David Marion, a wonderful man who emphasized by word and deed the importance of enjoying life and work, staying calm under pressure, and not taking life or myself too seriously. David did not urge me to enter public interest law, but he knew it was what I wanted to do and the lessons he taught me helped me do that.

SL: What are the greatest changes you’ve seen in the legal profession during your career?

AB: Law used to be a profession. Now it is much more of a business. For far too many people, law seems to have transformed from a profession where attorneys try to help their clients comply with the law, resolve disputes fairly, and do the right thing into a business where attorneys try to help their clients do and get away with whatever they want, whether or not it’s illegal, wrong, or harms, cheats, or kills people. Even when lawyers help their clients (from tobacco companies to high government officials) break the law, there seems to be no accountability, much less shame.

Technology has also transformed the practice of law. When I was going into law school, lawyers didn’t need to know how to type. Their secretaries did that. Legal research was primarily done in books. Now, lawyers ideally need to be crackerjacks on computers. Law students learn how to use books in courses on Advanced Legal Research.

SL: How have Public Justice and the Public Justice Foundation changed since you started as the sole staff attorney 27 years ago?

AB: We have grown in every way—members, staff, cooperating counsel, visibility, and, most important, impact. To my amazement and pride, Public Justice has been involved in a broader range of cutting-edge, high-impact litigation over the past 27 years than any public interest organization in the country. There are groups that use litigation to fight for consumers’ rights, workers’ rights, civil rights, civil liberties, environmental protection, or access to justice, but we are the only group using litigation to make a difference in all of those areas—and more.

SL: How do you think your work on Title IX has affected women outside of athletics? Will Title IX ever become unnecessary?

AB: I believe that our work on Title IX has affected women both inside and outside of the athletic arena by showing that gender discrimination is taking place, is wrong, and needs to challenged, and will be stopped if women and men (and girls and boys) take action. It has helped expose and decrease sex discrimination nationwide—and show that women and girls should be treated equally not only on the playing fields, but in the workplace and the world. It’s enormously important. Title IX could become unnecessary sometime, but that sure won’t be anytime soon.

SL: How have societal attitudes changed on the broad issues Public Justice addresses—such as civil liberties, environmental protection, and workers’ rights—over time? Have you seen a recent shift?

AB: I think social attitudes have improved in all of these areas, but attention has shifted far more towards those with power, wealth, and regressive views. In recent times, people have been very afraid — of everything from terrorist attacks to losing their jobs. That has made them more willing to sacrifice civil liberties, environmental protection, and workers’ rights—especially others’ civil liberties, environmental protection, and workers’ rights—to feel safe.

SL: What do you see as the next key issues for Public Justice?

AB: Access to justice and food safety. They affect everyone in America and, in some ways, the entire world.

SL: You have recently written about the recent Supreme Court decision, AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion.  What is your opinion of the decision and its limitations?

AB: Concepcion is a terrible decision that makes it much easier for corporations to cheat and discriminate against consumers and workers and avoid accountability. It will result in the illegal transfer of billions of dollars from customers and employees to unscrupulous corporations. It does not, however, mean that corporations can wipe out consumer and employment class actions. It has numerous limitations, explained in detail on our web site at www.publicjustice.net. Everyone addressing the decision’s impact needs to be aware of them — and courts need to enforce them.

SL: What are the attributes of the best lawyers?

AB: The best lawyers are smart, honest, caring, warm, have great judgment, a good sense of humor, and a healthy sense of outrage.

SL: What advice do you have for law students and young lawyers?

AB: Decide what you want to spend your legal career doing and then do your best to try to spend your legal career doing that. If you are going to spend your life arguing for something, try to make sure it is something you believe in. You will have a much happier life. Understand that if you take a job arguing for things you don’t believe in (because someone pays you to do so), there is a significant danger that you will end up believing them, which would be really sad. Hold on to yourself and your integrity. They are the most important things you have.

Martha Minow has been Dean of the Harvard Law School since 2009 and a professor there since 1981. An expert in human rights and advocacy for members of racial and religious minorities and for women, children, and persons with disabilities, she also writes and teaches about privatization, military justice, and ethnic and religious conflict.

Dean Minow serves as Vice Chair of the board of the Legal Services Corporation, a bi-partisan, government-sponsored organization that provides civil legal assistance to low-income Americans. She also serves on boards for the Revson Foundation, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the Covenant Foundation, Facing History and Ourselves, and other nonprofit organizations. She is a former member of the board of the Iranian Human Rights Documentation Center.  She has been a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences since 1992.

After completing her undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, Dean Minow received a master’s degree in education from Harvard and her law degree from Yale. She clerked for Judge David Bazelon of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court.

Dean Minow has authored many scholarly articles published in journals of law, history, and philosophy, as well as over a dozen books. Her most recent book is In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Educational Landmark.

Spindle Law: Who were your professional mentors and how did they influence your career?

Martha Minow:. My father is a distinguished lawyer and a former government official who influenced me with his service. My mother, who is not a lawyer, also has always given me professional advice and support. During college, I wanted to be anything but a lawyer.  But I was in graduate school, in education, at Harvard, in 1975, which was at the beginning of public school desegregation and court-ordered busing in Boston. I wanted to help children. I saw from that and other controversies that to make the kind of difference I wanted, I needed a law degree. So I went to law school.

SL: You have been teaching at Harvard since the early 1980s. How has the experience changed for you over time?

MM: Well, it took some time, but I think I’ve learned how to teach. I have branched out to many other subject areas. I began teaching family law, children’s issues, civil procedure.  Over time, I’ve taught classes in constitutional law, non-profit organizations, international criminal justice, law and science, privacy, jurisprudence, and ethics.  This spring, I will co-teach a new course, “The Digital Self.”

SL: What do you predict the next big changes for legal education to be in the coming decade?

MM: This is a fascinating time for law schools, lawyers, and those hoping for more access to justice. Practice is becoming more global, more interdisciplinary, focused on teamwork. The great opportunity and challenge for law professors is to assist in preparing the new generation of students for changes that we cannot fully predict and for becoming the kinds of problem-solvers adept at tackling unprecedented issues. On the legal scholarship side, more law professors are pursuing work that resembles arts and sciences scholarship.  The insights from interdisciplinary work can be fascinating and valuable; the challenge for law professors is to bridge theory and practice, and find ways to speak effectively to both scholars and to practitioners.

SL: Harvard has a reputation for placing students at the country’s top law firms. What is Harvard doing to address the dramatic changes in the availability of law jobs? Are there programs for students to pursue other career options?

MM: As Dean of the law school, this is what I think about all the time. We give our students the chance to go deep, while still remaining generalists.  We encourage entrepreneurship and some students create their own businesses or nonprofit organizations.  We promote opportunities for our students to work in civil rights, for the environment, and many other public service jobs. We provide public service summer opportunities, taken by the vast majority of our first-year students. We offer loan forgiveness for public service positions, and we define that very broadly:  students under the program work in local, state, and federal government posts, at nonprofit organizations, and in academic organizations in the USA, or in an overseas equivalent—and include coverage for those taking parental leave and working part-time while caring for family members.  We are here to help talented people pursue their dreams, both the dreams they bring to Harvard and those they develop while they’re here.

SL: We interviewed Dean Erwin Chemerinsky who noted that while “law schools are now commonly fifty percent or more women, women remain underrepresented at the top of the profession, in all areas.” Brande Stellings of Catalyst (and a HLS alumna) noted a similar trend, with women representing only 15-18% of partners in the biggest firms. What can be done to remedy under-representation of women in these positions?

MM: Being partner at a large law firm is a career avenue that should be open to anyone. There are certainly issues, however. There are issues in terms of mentorship, feedback opportunities, skills for developing new business, and accommodating family commitments. It is the organization of the workplace that has to change. Law schools do play a role in shaping the dynamics, but ultimately it is up to the employers to reinvent the workplaces to enable both women and men to succeed and stay. At the same time, there are many women who don’t want law firm jobs.  Many women come to Harvard wanting to work in public service and leave wanting to work in public service.  I think it is splendid that we have many students interested in government service; the nation and the world needs talented people to provide leadership in all settings.

SL: What is Harvard doing to improve diversity more broadly?

MM: Harvard – like every law school – is in the leadership business. We are committed to improving access to justice in all communities and to encouraging a full array of viewpoints in the classroom. We collaborate with New York University and Advantage Testing on the TRIALS program to bring a group of socio-economically disadvantaged undergraduate students here each summer, where we offer career guidance, introduction to legal reasoning, and the LSAT practice.  It’s small, but it’s a program I’m proud of.  For our admissions process for full-time students we strive to make sure that recruitment values a variety of experiences and perspectives.  We continue to push to diversify our faculty as well.

SL: You are Vice Chair of the Legal Services Corporation. What does LSC do and what are some of the challenges it is currently facing?

MM: The board members were appointed in 2009, by President Obama.  As board members, we walked into a situation of dire challenges for civil legal services across the country.  Legal services are facing not just cuts in federal funding, but decreasing IOLTA funds, as well as tight state and local budgets. At the same time, we see an exploding need among people for legal assistance: medical problems, foreclosures, employment and layoffs, violence, and more. State courts are in trouble as well given strained state budgets. Even for a pro se litigant, the question is whether there are clerks at the courthouse who can assist him or her through the process.

I’ve had the opportunity to work in places in the world coming through major political and governmental transitions.  One thing I’ve learned through that experience is that if you don’t have a functioning judicial system, and a legal system that’s perceived to be fair and running well, it can really jeopardize the stability of society.  Access to justice is fundamental, and obstacles to justice can undermine the people’s trust in the system in ways that threaten democratic stability.

SL: What is LSC doing to meet some of these challenges?

MM: LSC is in a planning process as we speak. We’re looking to increase technology innovation grants, and ways for organizations to develop programs that can be duplicated by others, sharing limited resources. A good example is the Veterans’ law web resource developed by Pine Tree Legal Assistance in Maine.

SL: How has the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” affected the Law School’s relationship with military recruiters?

MM: The Law School has always had access for our students to seek positions in the military. We have complied with the law since the Supreme Court decision addressing the issue.  And now, with the end of the government’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, our career services office is making sure that our students have even greater awareness of the superb opportunities to serve the community and country that exist in the military.

SL: Finally, what other advice do you have for law students and new lawyers?

MM: Law students and lawyers are lucky enough to be able to use their minds to learn how to solve problems domestically and throughout the world. I would ask that they teach as they do.   Sharing what they know with clients and diverse communities, lawyers can and should impart information to others and promote creative problem-solving. These skills can and should be used to empower others.

In addition, law students, especially, should study comparative law, international law, and seek to work internationally. I have learned a lot in my opportunities to work internationally. Skills and experiences in those realms will serve students and lawyers well in whatever community they serve.

Mr. Levine is co-chair of Gibson Dunn’s Public Policy  and its Crisis Management practice groups.  Mr. Levine’s practice  concentrates on counseling clients on the public policy aspects of complex domestic and international transactions.  His clients have included companies involved in a range of industries, including technology, energy, entertainment, health care, defense, manufacturing, construction and telecommunications.

Mr. Levine was named one of the “100 Most Influential” lawyers in California. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California (Berkeley) and a Director of the Pacific Council on International Policy.  He has served as U.S. Chair of the U.S.-Israel-Palestinian “Anti-Incitement” Committee established by the Wye Plantation Peace Agreement, as a Presidential appointee to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, as a U.S. government appointee to the U.S.-Israel Science and Technology Advisory Commission, as former President of the American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center in Israel, and as Board Chair of the Los Angeles Police Foundation.

Mr. Levine’s Congressional committee assignments included the Committee on Foreign Affairs and its subcommittees on International Economic Policy and Trade, Europe and the Middle East, and Asia; the Committee on the Judiciary and its subcommittee on Intellectual Property; and the Committee on the Interior and Insular Affairs.  Mr. Levine was especially engaged in U.S. foreign policy involving international trade and Middle East policy. He served as Chair of the House Task Force on Exports.  Mr. Levine founded and co-chaired Rebuild America, an educational foundation to improve American competitiveness by increasing support for high-technology industries, improving education and rebuilding infrastructure.

Mr. Levine received his law degree cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1969, a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton University in 1966, and a bachelor’s degree cum laude from the University of California at Berkeley in 1964.  Mr. Levine is married to journalist Connie Bruck, a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine.

Spindle Law:  What or who influenced you to become a lawyer?  And what type of practice did you have?

Mel Levine: My father was a lawyer who did not practice too much law but who always felt his law degree helped him in everything else he did in life and that influenced me quite a bit.  Also, as a student in the ’60s, I felt that being a lawyer would give me both the skills as well as better opportunities to influence public policy, which became a great interest of mine as an undergraduate at Berkeley and as a grad student at Princeton.  I began as a litigator which I did for about six years before running for public office.  Since joining GIbson, Dunn & Crutcher, after sixteen years in public office, I have chaired our law firm’s Public Policy practice group, which has developed into an interesting career in assisting clients around the world whose issues involve a mix of legal, political and legislative strategies.

SL: What led you to politics which, it seems, you successfully entered already at Berkeley as student body president?

ML: I became very interested in politics as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley in the ’60s, during the era of great student and political ferment in the country, and that interest escalated with my opposition to the war in Vietnam while I was a grad student at Princeton and a law student at Harvard.  I did not actually know that I wanted to seek elective office until shortly before I did, but I had been interested in public policy issues and the legislative process for some time and spent two years as a legislative aide to US Senator John Tunney in the early ’70s, which further confirmed my interest in legislation and public policy.

SL: Politicians recently have been getting a bad rap.  What’s your take on the latest spate of lapses in judgment?

ML: It is difficult to understand some of the “latest spate of lapses in judgment,” as you nicely put it.  But it is important to realize that, though there have been more than their fair share of them recently, they come from a tiny minority of elected office holders.  During my 16 years in elective office, I found that the overwhelming majority of legislators, of both political parties, are well-motivated, honest and interested primarily in improving their communities and the country.  Politics, in my view, remains a vitally important form of public service and it is, of course, essential in a functioning democracy for good people to want to enter politics if our government is going to function as it should.

SL: What are the attributes of the best lawyers? How do these overlap with attributes of good politicians?

ML: Those attributes are similar. They include a willingness and an ability to listen carefully to what your client/constituent is saying as well as to listen carefully to what your adversary is saying, and to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the other person, whether it be your client or your adversary.  It is important to be able to argue both your own side of the issue and at least to understand the other side and to attempt to achieve the most you can either in terms of your client’s interest or your legislative goals, but to know when to compromise and be willing to reach a middle ground in the context of whatever battles you are fighting.  Those who say compromise is capitulation don’t understand either the legal or the political process, though one should always be seeking to attain the most one can on behalf of one’s client and/or the issue you are trying to advance.

SL: As a Congressman interested in international trade and Middle East policy, were there any legal skills or expertise particularly helpful in that role?

ML: I believe that the ability to analyze and think critically, which is enhanced by a legal education and by the practice of law, sharpens your legislative and advocacy skills, and helps in terms of achieving the public policy goals you are seeking.  So, yes, in the context of international trade and Middle East policy, as well as other legislative areas, those legal and analytical skills enable you to be more effective in achieving your goals.

SL: What experiences in Congress were most useful when you transitioned back to private practice?

ML: Again, the ability to understand all sides of an issue and to know both the strengths and weaknesses of your and your client’s position, which are not that different from knowing both the strengths and weaknesses of your and your adversary’s position on trying to get a bill passed.  Learning to listen to arguments you particularly like or admire and understanding how best to respond to them is key to the legislative process and to achieving your goals as a lawyer.  This occurred regularly in the course of attempting to achieve my goals as a member of Congress.

SL: What has been the most important development in the legal profession in your career?

ML: In the course of my varied legal career, the practice has become vastly more specialized than it was when I first practiced law.  There are few generalists today in the law and that is unfortunate because a more general background provides a broader ability to see issues “outside the box.”  Most lawyers today are deeply knowledgeable in their area of expertise but limited beyond that area.  While, on the one hand, that enables a specialist to provide vitally important expertise in his or her area, it limits one’s ability to see how this fits into a broader picture, which might be important to achieving the most desirable result.  If a client can afford it, this can be somewhat remedied by engaging a variety of lawyers, or a law firm which has broad and varied expertise.  However, I believe that lawyers today would be more satisfied and their clients better served if they made it a practice to remain knowledgeable and involved in more areas than their own narrow specialty.

SL: What do you see as the greatest challenges to lawyers practicing today?

ML: The greatest challenges also present the greatest opportunities, which are to seek, and hopefully to find, legal work which you love.  For those who do that, the practice of law is a deeply satisfying experience.  For those who do not, it often becomes a burden.  It is difficult to know what area of law someone else will love, but each lawyer should do all he or she can to find these areas him or herself.  It need not be one particular area or practice.  The law offers so many diverse opportunities and challenges that finding a particular practice which excites you should be attainable, and is definitely worth working to find, even if you do not find it immediately.